The three from The Examiner were 10 minutes late (Phelps time).He was much later ? 45 minutes late. Ehrlich time, a Maryland State House regular said.
By this time my stomach is growling, loudly. But two members of his propaganda machine entertaining us are rolling. It went like this:
The opponents? commercials are lies. Damned lies, they say. The communicators stew out loud about how to combat them. Do you repeat the charges in a commercial ? and air them for those who haven?t heard them yet ? and then rebuff them? Or do you ignore them? But that seems so wrong. Those numbers ? so egregiously wrong ? can?t stand. The issue stands unresolved ? we are summoned to lunch.
Sort of. We walk upstairs to the smaller dining room in the Government House and wait some more. The peach ice tea-filled glasses at each white linen place mat are sweating.
Evidence of two young Ehrlich boys, 7 and 2, abound. Contraptions for throwing balls and games in boxes line side tables of the room, painted in a marbleized coral red.
We meet more men in earth tone suits and sport jackets with haircuts that mirror, if not deliberately, the governor?s bowl shaped brush cut. They all have such thick hair in this administration.
Then Kendel and Robert Ehrlich arrive. She wears a bright purple skirt suit with a silver necklace. He wears a yellow checked shirt, sleeves pushed up, with a blue and orange striped tie.
We sit down for lunch ? Asian crab cakes, asparagus and rice with scallions. Kendel, the First Lady, as he calls her in third person from time to time ? she refers to him as the Guv ? inconspicuously bows her head with closed eyes and says grace to herself.
The governor wears two rubber bracelets on his left wrist, one orange and one blue. The orange one says “I am Able.” That serves as a reminder for him in life, he says. As the first Republican governor in Maryland elected in nearly 40 years, it seems to fit.
The blue, he told us, reminds him of friends whose child suffers from Tay-Sachs Disease, a fatal neurological disorder.
Kristin Cox, the disabilities secretary, joins us after we are seated. The governor introduces her as the disabilities secretary, not his running mate.
But we are here to discuss the race.
He simply exudes confidence.
Are you winning, one of us asks?
“We?re winning [in our poll] and we understand that we?re ahead in theirs [O?Malley?s] as well,” says Ehrlich, broadly smiling and seeming to acknowledge the concern of his wife and team that he?s letting a cat out of the bag that they hadn?t signed off on.
But he smiles past specifics and doesn?t talk percentages, despite the prompting of one of us. And he won?t release the data.
Would he change his scrappy, combative style, perhaps, to win more jousts with the legislature.
“No,” he says, almost bristling, eyes flashing.
He dismisses clashes with the heavily Democratic legislature over electricity rates, Baltimore schools, Wal-Mart and health care over the past year as election year politicking.
He can work with the legislature and has, he said. About two weeks ago, he said, Senate President Mike Miller told him the Democratic leadership would work with his administration the next three years — just like it had the first three years of his current administration, a time during which, Governor Ehrlich noted, many of his administration?s initiatives were enacted. Both know election years are not for cooperation.
We asked Mr. Miller about this after the lunch and he said, “I support Mayor O?Malley and I hope he?s governor, but if by chance, Robert Ehrlich is elected, I will fully cooperate with him.”
What are his top priorities for the next term? Baltimore City public schools. They must be fixed, he said. “Those who stand in the way [of fixing them] must be run over.”
What would he do? He wants to double the number of charter schools to 40 in the city in the next two years. And he wants to dissolve the city/state partnership with the city school system that “allows failure to flourish.”
He said he will take over every failing school, not just the 11 his administration attempted to this spring before being thwarted by the legislature. But can he without the legislature?s imprimatur? And will it work? He did not say.
Other than those reforms he said he was all for competition. “We?re always for choice.”
What has he done to reduce waste in government?
Benchmarks. All department heads know they must meet their budgets. He does not say how they are held accountable if they don?t. And he thinks they run a pretty lean operation, having reduced the government payroll by 7 percent during his tenure, not counting higher education. We wonder what it looks like with higher education included?
He dismisses O?Malley?s CitiStat program, which tracks things like overtime for workers, department expenditures and response times for requests to fill potholes (and has been credited by some for improving city services and cutting costs) as a “gimmick.”
Besides, he said, the O?Malley administration?s “manipulation of statistics is a real issue,” particularly city crime figures. He said he regrets that he cannot constitutionally do much as governor to reduce crime in the city.
He puts a sugar substitute on his blueberries and sugar in his coffee, as dessert is served. Others requesting dessert are served something with whipped cream and sauce.
Kendel doesn?t eat hers.
We receive a two-minute warning from Press Secretary Greg Massoni after and hour. More meetings and Kendel tells one of us as we leave that before her next campaign stop she must hit Target to buy pants for her son who has outgrown his and head to youth football with her older son.
One last question. Why are you wearing Virginia colors on your tie?
“Isn?t this Carolina blue?” he jibes back. Usually he wears red and black — or orange and black, colors of his alma mater, Princeton.
Marta Hummel is associate editorial page editor of The Baltimore Examiner. She can be reached at [email protected].
